Remember the old adage: The future’s so bright that I have to wear shades? Well, apparently our government has taken the express to heart, except they’re not wearing shades. Instead, the current administration seems to be wearing rose-colored glasses.
For almost two years now, the White House has withheld the release of a congressionally mandated report that provided a stark and fairly unbiased look at the effects of high-tech outsourcing. I encourage every EDA and semiconductor engineer/manager to read this report: http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Investigations/TAReport/commerce_report2_workforce_jul04.pdf
The report was not released in 2004 due to the politics associated with a presidential election year. But in reading though the report, I don’t understand why its publication was surpressed? Did the current administration really believe it contained anything that the typical EDA or semicon engineer didn’t already know? No engineer or program manager that I know would be surprised to learn that outsourcing posses the biggest threat to our profession. Apparently it’s only news to our leaders.
What does the report contain? Actually, its findings are fairly conservative – too much so, in my opinion. Here are some of the minuses and pluses, at least as they affect the semicon industry:
Minuses:
- A recent survey in Asia’s Educational Edge (2001) indicated that about 57% of Chinese graduates of US universities plan to return home within 10 years
- Asia is projected to build 74% of world’s new semiconductor manufacturing capacity compared to North America 8% in the next few years.
- China is seen as having a critical mass of educated engineers, available capital and business incentives to foster a strong domestic semiconductor industr
Pluses:
- US companies have the leading share of global semiconductor revenues (based on 2003 figures).
- The US has historically been a leader in higher education and training, but other countries are beginning to provide comparable quality and access to education.
- It noted that no R&D or design work shifted to Asia in the wake of chip assembly and test operations in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Taiwan foundries have been manufacturing chips for U.S. customers since the mid-1980s, but the report stressed that U.S. companies did not shift their R&D centers to Taiwan.
Sadly, this last “plus” is incorrect. Numerous companies, from Intel and TI to the small vendors, have moved R&D operation to
Asia.
So here is the fundamental question: How can the
US remain a leader in the high tech when even our own government hides the facts about outsourcing? Understanding the real answer to this question would also shed light on many related issues, like this administrations lack of funding of basic R&D, unfunded educational priorities and a variety of questionable business-investment issues.
Guess it’s time to take of them shades. The high-tech future just doesn’t look that bright in the good old
USA.
